Who Cares Why the Elephant is Standing on Your Foot? Just Get Him Off.

Years ago I conducted support groups for women who were sexually traumatized as children. They came in trembling and uncertain to face their victimizations. Many for the first time ever. They learned that after the telling of their story, and dealing with all the ramifications (grief, shame, horror, anger, etc.) throughout each session, that soon it was time to move on. They then were directed into healing and a new realization of their worth, their callings, and who they really were in Christ. Subsequently, their decision to be free of the past was what set them free. It was a priceless experience for me to witness these women who came in as victims leave the group as victors and take control of their own lives.

By contrast, some of those women shared with me that they had been in secular support groups for years, and each week all they ever did was talk about their victimizations over and over. And they never seemed to find healing. They just relived the past over and over.

You can spend hours and hours working out your past life traumas. You can talk about it all day long.

And many do.

You can trace the root causes of where your pain began and find the ultimate reason why you are so stuck.

Been there too!

But there comes a time in our lives where we finally have to shift our attention, not on the past, but where we would rather be.

And there comes a time when we have to accept that to move forward it is up to us to let go of the pain and start moving.

When we feel like all we are doing is constantly rehashing the past and are not moving forward it is the time to just do it!

The Lord can only fix us when we are willing to let Him.

Sometimes our past has brought us so much attention, and if we were to be honest, we don’t really want to let it go. Even though it is a miserable place to be it feels more comfortable than the unknown. Even when the unknown is the place of finally healing.

Familiar friends, I call them….but very toxic and not our friends at all.

I’ve had at least a thousand conversations with sweet clients and friends about wanting to be unstuck and wanting to see their desires come to pass and find success in life. The ones who truly found healing were the ones who were willing to process the past and take the steps to let it go and find God’s purposes for them today.

Recapitulating the past can provide a lot of comfort and confirmation. And is necessary in most cases to gain understanding of why we do what we do.

But…too much analysis can create a type of paralysis, and work against us, preventing us from moving forward.

Someone said, “Who cares why the Elephant is standing on your foot? Just get him off.”

Sometimes we can’t see why we were stuck until after we get unstuck.

You have a new path to take, and it looks nothing like your last path.

Don’t get me wrong. We have to look at our past to move forward. As a Life Coach I believe that when what is in darkness within our souls comes to the light with a trusted mentor/coach, the darkness has to go.

It loses its power over us. The power lies in the secret, in the silence.

As an incest survivor it wasn’t until I told someone for the first time what had happened to me that my healing began. The power that secret had over me suddenly disappeared the moment I told.

So, yes, we must tell a trusted coach, mentor, or therapist our story to move forward and get unstuck and sometimes to break generational patterns.

So going there is necessary…

BUT STAYING THERE IS NOT!

Learning to let go of our pain once and for all is a huge step towards being healthy, spirit, soul, and body.

People who hold on to these past hurts often relive the pain over and over in their minds. Sometimes a person can get “stuck” in this pain, in this hurt, in this blame their whole lives.

The only way you can accept new joy and happiness into your life is to make space for it. If your heart is filled with pain and hurt, how can you be open to anything new?

Make the decision to let it go.

Making the decision to let it go also means accepting you have a choice to let it go. To stop reliving the past pain, to stop going over the details of the story in your head.

A very important step is to stop being the victim and blaming others.

Being the victim feels good — it’s like being on the winning team of you against the world.

But in reality, and I hate to say this, but in general the world largely doesn’t care.

Yes, you’re special.

Yes, your feelings matter.

Your feelings are just one part of this large thing we call life, which is all interwoven and complex.

And messy.

In every moment, you have that choice — to continue to feel bad about another person’s actions, or to start feeling good.

You need to take responsibility for your own happiness, and not put such power into the hands of another person. Why would you let the person who hurt you — in the past — have such power, right here, right now?

No amount of rumination of hurt has ever fixed a relationship problem.

Never.

Focus on the present — the here and now — and the joy that you have in the Lord. It is there for your taking…but again, you have to choose it!

Choices!

Let go of the past, and stop reliving it. You can’t undo the past, all you can do is to make today the best day of your life.

Our lives should not be defined by our pain. It’s not healthy, it adds to our stress, it hurts our ability to focus on the good in us that God put there, and it impacts every other relationship we have (even the ones not directly affected by the hurt).

Every day you choose to hold on to the pain is another day everybody around you has to live with that decision. And feel its consequences.

Let go of the pain. Do something different today and welcome happiness back into your life.

If you need help with letting go of your pain and moving forward, as a Life Purpose Coach, I can help you with that. Click hereto read some of my clients’ Success Stories and letters of freedom from the past!